User blog:Tannhaeuser/Editing Made Easier - Italics, Bolding, and Quotation Marks
In order to provide a certain amount of consistency of usage on the Wiki, I thought I would take a brief time to talk about three ways of distinguishing phrases from their context that are often confused. One is the use of bolding. One is the use of italicizing. One is the use of "quotation marks." There are no truly solid and recognized rules for using these three methods; however, there are general trends to follow. Bolding is pretty much the equivalent of ALLCAPS or double underlining. It is used for emphasis: *I know '''Cartoon Network has shut down the servers, and it makes me '''furious. In textbooks, encyclopedias, and so on, bolding is used to single out words that are being defined. On wikis, the subject of the page or article should be bolded at or very near the beginning of the article, thus: *'Bolding' is a method of distinguishing words from their context that involves enlarging or thickening the lines of the font used for those words more than the surrounding words. That is how bolding will usually be used on this wiki: *The Tire Titan is a boss character. Italicizing is roughly the equivalent of underlining. It also is occasionally used for emphasis, though the emphasis is generally not as great as that of bolding. Italicizing is also used by some authors to indicate unspoken thoughts. However, the most generally agreed upon uses of italicizing are for 1) foreign words, such as exempli gratia, joie de vivre, sprezzatura, hidalgo, bushido, and so on, and 2) long (novel length, at least) or major works, such as Paradise Lost, The Maltese Falcon, The Flying Dutchman, American Gothic, The Big Bang Theory, The Legend of Zelda, and the like. Sometimes the words to be items to be emphasized are both foreign and the title of a long work: *I believe that Citizen Kane is every bit as much a Gesamtkunstwerk as La Forza del destino is. It should be noted that some foreign words (such as "gemsbok," "intelligentsia," and "sauna") have become so much a part of English that they do not require italicization. Other words, such as "Realpolitik," "chutzpah," and "glasnost," hover just on the edge of Anglicization, and may be italicized by some authors or publishers and not by others. These forms of distinguishing may be combined: *''Prodaná nevěsta'' is an opera by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana usually known in English as The Bartered Bride. Italicization is also used to refer to the names of individual ships or other individual methods of transport: *The Sweet Revenge is as doomed as the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the Hindenburg. On this wiki, italicization should most often be used to refer to games or series: *''FusionFall'' and its offspring FusionFall Heroes include elements from several Cartoon Network series, including The Powerpuff Girls, Adventure Time, and Gumball. Care should be taken, however, to distinguish when words are being used as a title and when they are not: *The Powerpuff Girls are the stars of The Powerpuff Girls, just as Johnny Bravo is the star of Johnny Bravo. As mentioned above, some people like to use bolding, italics, and capital letters for emphasis. However, they should generally be used sparingly: *''Over''-'emphatic' Statements START TO LOOK RIDICULOUS. Finally, I have discussed the use of quotation marks in my last post. Quotation marks are used to indicate direct speech, as in... *Professor Utonium said, "If Sedusa is not in this game, she should not have a page on the wiki." However, quotation marks are also used to single out short works, such as short poems or short stories or other short works ("The Harmonious Blacksmith," "Annabel Lee," "The Catbird Seat") or shorter parts of longer works (Chapter One: "I Am Born"; "The Miller's Tale") or one episode of a series ("The Trouble with Tribbles"). Again, these methods can overlap in certain contexts: *''"Ton-yare Bushi"'' is a Japanese military march used by both Giacomo Puccini in Madam Butterfly and by Sir Arthur Sullivan in The Mikado. On this wiki, quotation marks should be used to distinguish episodes of series and for missions or mission series: *Freddy Fishlegs, who came from the Flapjack episode "Sea Legs," gives out the mission "Blood Gnat Extermination." Even when used as titles, however, quotation marks still follow the rules given in the last post. * Tann said, "Freddy Fishlegs, who came from the Flapjack episode 'Sea Legs,' gives out the mission 'Blood Gnat Extermination.'" It should be noted that many publications, when writing headlines, prefer to use single quotes, while using double quotes in the body of a story: SNYDER 'DESERVEDLY MURDERED' A Cartoon Network fan, speaking under condition of anonymity, says Cartoon Network president Stuart Snyder was "deservedly murdered" for removing the game Cartoon Network Universe: FusionFall from the Cartoon Network website. I don't care for it, myself, but that is the trend. I hope this was helpful! Category:Blog posts